You can't get everything you want. It's not possible. But vote anyway | R. Bruce Anderson
Lately, I’m given to understand, that not many folks are all that happy with the choice of candidates: not just the big show at the top, but all the way down the ballot, down to the County Commission seats and School Boards.
And it’s not just here, but across the great, dysfunctional polity that is the USA. The dissatisfaction ranges from mild displeasure to rabid road-rage. We’re divided, I understand, but a lot of what I hear sounds as though we are divided between those who care enough to vote and those who regard it as a pointless chore, or a target for protest, or worst, as a waste of time.
Pericles of Athens said (and I’m paraphrasing here) something along these lines: “what separates democracies from tyrannies is that in democracies, the citizen takes it upon themselves, in their own interest, to be a part of the community of decisionmakers.”
Can we disagree? Party purity, the Trump way | R. Bruce Anderson
A community. Despite all the debate and division, we’re a community of Americans, living in a republic, making choices about who’ll represent us. There are 333 million of us, crossing every oddity of the political geography. So here’s an ugly reality: None of us will get what we want. None of us will be satisfied across every level of representation – it’s simply not possible. We have to settle.
We live in a two-party system, and the problem is not that we’re split. Of course we are: literally hundreds of millions of different views of how the political world should look and act. It’s that we’re almost evenly split.
This was the plan, constitutionally speaking, with intent. For good or ill, we lean to the middle, however extreme or radical the individuals in the system may be, there is always balance – it’s part of the mechanical strategy of this constitutional compromise.
In 1888, James Russell Lowell described the U.S. Constitution as a “machine that would go of itself,” a kind of documentarian fence and guide — a guardrail — that prevents extremism from taking over.
We have three sectors of government (legislative, executive and judicial), and at least three levels of operation (local, state, and federal), and it is impossible for any one (of the two) political persuasions to control all of them. Even the FDR Democratic domination of the republic following the economic crash of 1929 could not hold on to anything like absolute power. And even when Democrats were governing in the executive and the legislatures, they were sharply blunted by a Republican-appointed Supreme Court whose foundations were laid in the 1920s.
Voice of the people (April 21, 2024): US crackdown on TikTok is about security
Multiparty systems provide more choices, but are, as Madison and the Federalists realized in 1789, inherently unstable. They encourage silly machinery like parliamentary coalitions with dozens of competing interests. This is why elections are so unending in The Netherlands and Belgium – and why extremism can erupt without warning.
In a two-party system, when there is a wilder swing to the right or left, chances are the “swing” is never more than a few degrees off center, anyway. Candidates employ some of the most expensive mouthpieces in any industry to “craft” their “articulated” positions, which are rarely more than one standard deviation from the grand mean (or average) of everyone else’s.
And before you say it, voting third party is silly – a vote for Kennedy is not a “Vote for Trump” or a “Vote for Biden.” It’s worse: It’s a vote for Kennedy, which might smooth your hackles but does not in the least engage with realities.
Success in any system depends on your vote, though. Voting shows support for the system, trust that the system can work (most of the time), and a general social engagement with those that represent you.
So, you may not get exactly what you want at any level, but you may get some of what you want in at least some levels and in some offices. But if you do not vote, you deserve nothing.
Wake up. Register. Vote
R. Bruce Anderson is the Dr. Sarah D. and L. Kirk McKay, Jr. Endowed Chair in American History, Government, and Civics and Miller Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Florida Southern College. He is also a columnist for The Ledger and political consultant and on-air commentator for WLKF Radio in Lakeland.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Cranky about the choices? Ok, but vote anyway | R. Bruce Anderson
